Main menu

Daily News November 22

Go Ahead, Make Yourself At Home
A Japanese man landed in a Mexican airport with the appropriate visas and documentation. You might think he was there on business or leisure; apparently, it was neither. The man has yet to leave the airport. He has been living in the Mexican airport since September 2 and because he entered legally with all the right documentation, neither the Japanese Embassy or the Mexican government can really do anything until his visa expires in March. The man said he has no idea why he feels compelled to live in the airport.

He has not bathed since his arrival, and he gets food from the food court vendors who give them their scraps, and sometimes passers-by buy him pastries and hamburgers. It is such a phenomenal sensation that there is now a daily report on him in the news, just to see what he is up to. The man said he is, “Terminal 2,” right after the first Terminal that starred Tom Hanks as a random Eastern European man stuck in the airport due to political reasons.

Okay, obviously the man may not be mentally all there. Where is his family? What do they have to say about this? He may not be a menace to anybody but he is not bathing and he is living off other people’s charity. I thought when you visit a country, you have to provide an address of where you’ll be staying? I wonder if he got on the plane from Japan with the express purpose of never leaving the airport. Notice he didn’t try that shit in the United States.

Live Death
A Florida teenager has committed suicide in front of a live online audience. He entered a body-building chatroom with webcam and told people that he was going to commit suicide. Most people were like, “Yeah, whatever,” because he had done this before. Other people were like, “Do it!” and some people tried to talk him out of it. The boy was bipolar and was taking medications for it; he overdosed on his medications. While he was taking the pills, other chat users were calmly discussing whether or not he was taking the right amount of pills to kill himself.

When it became apparent that he really was going to kill himself, some people continued to egg him on and a few other people contacted the administrators of the website who got in touch with the police…. 12 hours later. The boy was already dead by the time the police entered his room. All of this was captured on the webcam. When the boy passed out and/or died, some chat users wrote, “LOL” and “OMFG” indicating a mixed reaction to the suicide. When the police arrived in the room, they covered the camera.

Okay, so the family is completely outraged that this happened, and I feel for them, however it is not really anybody else’s fault. The boy was 19 and he either lived at home and no one was home, or he lived on his own (the article was not clear). There really is no censorship on the internet, as there shouldn’t be, so pretty much anything goes. It’s not the rest of the world’s duty to take care of someone else’s mentally disturbed adult. The sister was upset saying that it took 12 hours for someone to do something. What should have been done? You know him better than any of those chat users do. How would they know he was serious?

You can’t ever really believe anything on the internet. Maybe committing suicide on a body-builder website was over the top, but most of the time people who try to commit suicide don’t really want to die. They just want or need attention because something is missing. I’m not psychologist, and I don’t know anything about anything, but I would guess that he did it because maybe the people in his real life could care less about him. The family said he was bipolar. Even when taking their medications, their emotions are in a turmoil all the time; maybe the family wasn’t really providing the mental healthcare that he needed. There’s more to just medicating a person, sometimes they need extra love and attention.

I feel very sorry for the family, and if I were in their position I’d be angry too, but it’s not the users’ fault. It’s not the fault of the website administrator. It’s not really anybody’s fault. People don’t just commit suicide for fun, there’s some things going on that people in a chat room are just not going to know about. You can’t police the world. You have to police you and your own.

Disclaimer

Because nothing is complete without a list of rules:

1. Commentary is highly encouraged; however, don't be That Guy. Keep it bland. Also, remain anonymous. I have no desire to know any of you. Do not describe yourself, your location, or anything that someone might give a shit about. Don't even approach me in person. Chances are I do not even like you and wouldn't want to talk to you anyway.

2. All characters and events appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and something I dreamt up while sitting on the toilet. In fact, I'm not even a real person. I am a baby tapir living at the San Diego zoo.

3. This is my personal journal and any views and opinions expressed herein are entirely my own lunatic ramblings and NOT the opinions of my overlord--who would first have to have a huddle, then a briefing, followed by a memo and then another briefing in order to have an opinion. The two have nothing to do with each other, so don't even go there.